Flush the snot: start with Anderton

"It's called a 'computer,' Mr Anderton"

I heard that fuck-knuckle Anderton guffawing like a half-baked fool in parliament the other day when he attempted to ridicule the idea that the didymo infestation should be combated by flushing the effected rivers. He cackled that the people proposing this didn't understand that it would kill everything else in the river too. God that man is a cock - an idiotic dinosaur and apologist for every bureaucratic failing without the intelligence to grasp the big picture let alone the detail. His continued presence in the Clark Ministry at the ridiculously high ranking of No. 3 is a gauge of it's collective ineptitude.

NZH today:
All of the South Island has been declared a "controlled area" for the invasive algae didymo, which is also known as rock snot. Travellers and freight companies crossing Cook Strait from the south must clean any items that have been in lakes or rivers... in effect the biosecurity agency has given up on the idea of "isolating" infested rivers.

Let's call it THE ANDERTON PLAN since he supports it (as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Biosecurity etc.) this involves conceeding/sacrificing the entire South Island to this pest weed. Flushing the infected rivers (with some sort of toxin plus a ground sweep) is going to be the only way to get rid of the stuff. The bureaucracy's half-arsed non-plan is not to eradicate (flush) but to protect it so it will eventually take over the entire South Island. In the same way they fucked up the Apple Moth eradication in Auckland because they put a useless woman in charge, so this containment idea will similarly be a disaster. And there is Anderton, Biosecurity Minister, laughing at any idea to get rid of it.

Didymo stuffs up rivers completely. It got into NZ somehow. The Govt. doesn't know and doesn't care how it got in and how to stop it. So while they are "controlling" the South Island it could well get in from overseas in the North Island - I have heard absolutely nothing about what they are doing to prevent that.

Flushing is the only thing that will work. If we do it now then we can eliminate it while it is in only a few rivers. No more didymo. A South Island river fisherman friend of mine concurs. We can re-stock the affected rivers, but leaving them with didymo is to leave them dead. But the Govt. will squander this opportunity and let it spread and in effect protect it. Ruination courtesy of Jim Anderton. And we thought Marion Hobbs was useless. What a frightful legacy he will leave - wanting to destroy private property rights by having the public wander down land next to rivers and simultaneously ensuring that those waterways are infected with a virulent weed that means no one will want to do that anyway. Typical, classic Anderton: everyone loses.